Five Isle of Thanet artists showcase new work at Lombard Street Gallery inspired by an event that happened over 100 years ago as they travel From Wasteland to Wasteland, exploring and connecting World War One, Margate and T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land.

On the first day of the Battle of the Somme, 1916, Captain James Young of the 179th Tunnelling company, Royal Engineers, detonated two explosive charges in tunnels dug through chalk from the British trenches to a position under the German front line.

The resulting explosion created a single, vast, smooth-sided, flat-bottomed crate measuring nearly 100 metres across and 21 metres deep. Now known as the Lochnagar Crater, it is the largest crater ever made by man during war, and is now a site dedicated to peace, fellowship and reconciliation.

Five years later, after suffering a nervous breakdown, T.S. Eliot travelled to Margate to rest. Sitting in a seafront shelter, and inspired in part by the horror of the First World War, he wrote his epic poem The Waste Land.

This exhibition is part of an ongoing project by this collective of five artists, who have been given unique access to the crater site to inspire their work.

Dawn Cole is an award-winning printmaker known for her work exploring stories from the First World War. Helder Clara uses arduous processes to make objects, installations, sculpture and photographic documentation. Lorna Dallas-Conte has a fascination with colour and an interest in traditional craft skills. Dan Thompson is an award-winning social artist and writer. Graham Ward is a painter, writer and archivist.

This is an independent event organised by members of the public in response to Turner Contemporary's invitation to create an event or activity inspired by The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot's legacy, and Turner Contemporary's exhibition Journeys with 'The Waste Land'.